Hisar (Haryana) | Scientists have successfully "produced" a foal of the Marwari horse breed using the embryo transfer technology, the director of the ICAR-National Research Centre on Equines (NRCE), Dr TK Bhattacharya, said on Saturday.

Under the technology, a fertilised embryo at the blastocyst (early) stage -- day 7.5 after insemination -- was collected from the donor mare and successfully transferred to the recipient (surrogate) mother.

Through this technique, "'Raj-Prathama', India's first Marwari foal was produced", Bhattacharya said in a statement and noted that the population of the horse breed is declining.

'Raj-Prathama', born on Friday, had a normal birth weight of 23 kg, he said. "To conserve and propagate the declining population of equine breeds in India, ICAR-NRCE is working strenuously. In this direction, a project was initiated to cryopreserve the Marwari horse breed embryos," the statement said.

The National Livestock Mission project of Rs 100 lakh was granted to Dr TR Talluri, Dr Yash Pal Sharma, Dr RA Legha and Dr RK Dedar, it said and added that the "foal was produced under the said project by the team of scientists".

The team has also successfully vitrified 10 Marwari horse embryos and further work is going to cryopreserve more horse embryos, the statement said.

Congratulating the team of scientists, Bhattacharya said the population of equines in the country is dwindling, and infertility and non-reproducing mares are one of the reasons for this.

This technology could be very useful for obtaining foals from such animals and also facilitate getting more foals from elite animals, the statement said.

It could also be applied to those animals which do not respond to the conventional infertility treatment regimes.